In 2018 Hideo Kojima visited Valve headquarters to talk about Death Stranding. Based on emails now public thanks to the ongoing Musk v. Altman lawsuit, Kojima and Gabe Newell seem to have hit it off, if they weren't already buddy-buddy: after the meeting Newell promised to introduce Kojima to people at the then still-not-well-known OpenAI, and also to Elon Musk. Musk, of course, owns SpaceX, and Kojima has well-known ambitions to go to space. "Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear series, a real visionary in our field) was here at Valve talking about his new game, and he mentioned the importance he places on future work in AI," Newell wrote to Musk in late October, 2018. "I said I'd be happy to introduce him to the people at OpenAI and spoke enthusiastically about the work that team has done with us (I'm not sure how involved you are with them nowadays)." Newell continues: "The second thing is he was talking about how much he wants to go into space, and I offered to introduce him to you. He'd love to get a SpaceX tour." Musk was receptive: "Sure, it would be great to meet Hideo Kojima and he's welcome to see the rocket factory," he wrote. "No problem to send him my email." By 2020, Kojima's desire to visit space still hadn't been fulfilled. In an interview with Geoff Keighley, Kojima said that he wanted to visit SpaceX with Newell, to which Elon Musk replied on X (then still Twitter): "Welcome anytime." It needs to be kept in mind that Kojima's desire to go to space is more intense than, say, a five-year-old child's. In his book The Creative Gene (via Vice), Kojima describes his passion thusly: Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.